Bausch and Lomb: Stick In The Eye

I hope, especially if you wear contact lenses, that you've heard about the serious eye infections tied to Bausch and Lomb's ReNu with MoistureLoc.

According to Reuters, the Wall Street Journal and others, Bausch & Lomb (B&L) said it was alerted by Hong Kong health officials to eye infections in users of its contact lens solution in November 2005, though problems reared their head in June 2005. I remember this, because I emailed my brother who, like me, wears contacts. But I also remember thinking that it must be something peculiar to the formula used in Hong Kong (and Singapore) , since B&L never issued a warning in the United States.

For several months, I heard nothing more in the U.S. news.

Now, however, B&L has a crisis on its hands, as people begin to question why it took B&L so long to let contact lens wearers know about the problem. What I see now is that many news reports are not making a clear distinction between B&L's ReNu product line in general, and the specific product causing the problem: ReNu MoistureLoc. How many B&L customers have completely abandoned B&L products because they do not know which ReNu product is tied to the horrible eye infection? Or out of fear that B&L is just not coming clean about the company's other products?

CEO Pay

Many corporations are starting to run afoul of their publics due to what many call the excessive salary and benefits granted their CEOs. The average raise of CEOs for the S&P 500, for example is now 430 times more than the average workers' pay [AP].

I haven't seen much of a response from these companies. But maybe CEO pay is commensurate with CEO pain.

A CEO of a publically traded company may experience unique physical and mental stresses. They may be thrown in jail, for something they did not knowingly condone. They may have their name besmirched simply because someone doesn't like the way they are handling a division of a company. They may have to suffer personal attacks on their character. They may attain the rarified air of CEO only once in their lifetime, and because there are relatively few CEO jobs avaliable, may never have the opportunity to be CEO again. All jobs may seem of secondary interest and/or importance to them from then on.

Maybe the real problem with CEO pay is not that they get paid so much. Maybe the challenge is figure out how to adequately articulate why a CEO is actually getting paid what she's worth.